As we emphasised throughout the EU referendum campaign, neither wildlife nor the climate respect borders. Their protection requires every country to play its part, regardless of politics. That’s why I was delighted to see that, despite all the turmoil of last week, the UK Government committed to adopt the UK’s fifth carbon budget, setting a target to ensure that carbon emissions are reduced by 57% by 2028-32.
This is as an important milestone in ensuring the UK remains on a path to delivering a safer climate future, which protects wildlife and people alike.
Last month, the RSPB and NGO colleagues, produced a report showing how the UK risks getting left behind the rest of the world in delivering the infrastructure needed to secure a low carbon future. The fifth carbon budget therefore comes at a critical time for UK’s business and investment sectors, providing much needed certainty.
The UK Government now has until December to set out the actions needed to deliver the budget in a Carbon Plan. The RSPB will be working hard to ensure that this Plan is not only robust in terms of protecting the climate, but also deliverable in harmony with nature.
Our ground-breaking Energy Vision provides us with the evidence platform to demonstrate how this can be done. It shows how the UK can deliver high levels of renewable energy including onshore wind and solar while avoiding sensitive sites for wildlife. It also sets out what other measures will be essential alongside this including: ambitious demand reduction measures like home insulation and better use of public transport plus investment in new technologies such as energy storage and floating offshore wind. These must be matched by a grid system that supports a new wave of renewables and helps us be ‘smarter’ about how we use energy.
Wind turbine at the RSPB's Headquarters (Paul Langshaw)
We won’t achieve this without strong political leadership and economic incentives that work for nature and the climate. A road map for decarbonisation in harmony with nature would enable government to steer developers towards suitable sites for renewable energy development with low risk for wildlife. We have already demonstrated how this is possible in our report using pioneering and peer-reviewed mapping techniques. We hope to see these issues addressed in the Plan to deliver the fifth carbon budget later in the year.
The UK’s Climate Change Act, under which carbon budgets are set, is a piece of national legislation of which we can be proud. It is not formally linked to EU climate legislation and as such it should not be impacted by the broader Brexit negotiations. It is clear that whilst negotiating the UK’s future relationship with the EU is likely to cause real uncertainties and capture political and media attention for months or potentially years, climate change will not wait patiently in the wings while these negotiations take place. We must press on, reflecting the level of urgency, in order to protect both people and wildlife in the UK and globally.
Reflecting on Brexit last week, I argued that the UK must continue to be an international leader on climate change, building on its instrumental role in delivering a strong global climate treaty in Paris last year. The fifth carbon budget announced this week is a positive signal of this ongoing commitment, and we will continue to work with government and our NGO partners, in the UK and globally, to help keep the UK on this path.